My employer is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century with respect to "flexible" working. Which in reality is "you can start any time between 7 and 9, but you must work the same fixed full day every day, oh, and 1 day a week (except Mondays) you can work from home". Not my definition of "flexible" working.
Embroiled in the mothership abductee engagement survey at the moment. The Swiss do work a 42 h/week standard (to be fair, you should see their salaries, which hover around twice the equivalent in the UK). They also record all their hours in a very Germanic fashion. A fair number on this basis opt to do a 4-day week and take a 20% salary cut. All of this means, our UK abductees are pegged at 40 h/week which is causing some displeasure (not unreasonably, considering it's an industry where 35 h/week is fairly standard in the UK). We did sort of make the decision to do a reduction in the UK, but then misplaced it. We're mostly flexible and completely hybrid though, and the office has beer and snacks, and we throw good parties. As for my department, if they act like grown-ups, I'm not bothered when they come and go as long they're generally about when needed.
Which industry is this, with a standard 35hr week?
I moved jobs to reduce hours from 65-70 down to a more reasonable 50-55
The tidy mines of Thought Leadership (data and analytics mostly, I worked in various bits of Thomson and its entities for years). That's 35 hours contractual, obviously as a salaried subdeck minion, I have always worked more (and I've never had a job where they counted the actual hours, and travelling made for long weeks). This is the first time I've been contracted to 40 hours, though as a bridge crew these days it's not like it matters, I mostly work 9-6ish.
Of course, that five extra hours matters to the junior subdeck minions who are expected to be on-station and don't enjoy the bounteous benefits of Swiss-style remuneration and thus might be tempted to go elsewhere.
If I see any of my bunch lolling around on Teams after 6pm, I tell them to fuck off, I don't want people working stupid hours, it's stressful and unproductive.